Seoul-based edtech startup Mathpresso secures $50 million in Series C funding

Seoul-based edtech startup Mathpresso announced it has raised $50 million in a Series C funding round last week, bringing the company's total funding to $105 million.

The new Series C round was participated by Yellowdog, GGV Capital, Goodwater Capital, KDB, and SKS Private Equity. In addition to the four new investors, previous backers including SoftBank Ventures Asia, Legend Capital, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, and Smilegate Investment also participated in the round. This round marks GGV's first investment in a Korea-based startup. With edtech as its key global investment thesis, GGV has backed a number of edtech companies like Zuoyebang.

The startup was founded in 2015 by co-CEO Ray Lee and Jake Lee, and operates QANDA, a K-12 mobile learning app. In 2017, QANDA adopted an AI-based optical character recognition(OCR) scan that searches for answers in 5 seconds. The service is now used by over 9.8 million users monthly from more than 50 different countries; a five times increase since 2020. Over 80% of QANDA's users are now outside of Korea, with its strongest user bases include Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand.

Mathpresso's home ground has been long considered an educational mine; Korea has one of the highest household expenditures on education and one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Since the school lockdown in April, 2020, online learning emerged as a new form of education with the number of QANDA's monthly active users surging by nearly 5 times.

Applying Korea's advanced learning content and after-school tutoring system to the global market, Mathpresso plans to develop a multi-faceted education platform with personalized content catered to each user's learning level. A premium subscription model that offers micro video lectures launched in Korea in March of this year. 

Ray Lee describes the company's mission as "segmenting and connecting all education content in the world" to build a highly personalized learning platform backed by seamless recommendation algorithms. The company also has ventured into offline and book publishing to optimize learning experience both online and offline. QANDA Study Center Vietnam partners with teachers to match them with students and publishes quality workbooks, securing its presence as an all-in-one education hub.

With its Series C investment, Mathpresso plans to strengthen its AI-based techniques of recommendation algorithms and develop localized business models for its regional offices in Indonesia and Thailand. "Historically, quality education has been strictly available for the privileged few," said Jake Lee, "Our mission is to break down the barriers to education through technology. In the future we vision, anyone should and will be able to access quality education built just for them."

www.athpresso.com